2011 TV Newsmaker: Game of Thrones

The death of hero Ned Stark shocked the TV world, and the fantasy series is poised for more surprises in Season 2

Sean Bean as Ned Stark on HBO's Game of Thrones

Photograph by: Handout
, HBO

BELFAST, Ireland — Sean Bean’s severed head sits on a shelf in a suburban Belfast studio. Blood and grime are matted between his facial hairs and cake his long, wavy brown hair — and a vacant sadness emanates from his bluish-grey eyes. At first glance, you wonder if Bean took method acting a little too far for his role as Game of Thrones’ Eddard “Ned” Stark, but then you realize the skin is latex and the eyes are glass — although, at four kilograms, journalists are told the prop is eerily similar to the weight of a real human head.

The sudden beheading of Bean’s character, Ned Stark, was one of the most shocking, controversial moments of television this year. While fans of the books were prepared for the honourable Lord of Winterfell’s abrupt and unjust end, the grisly moment stunned fans who only knew the story through the TV series.

It took more than one Bean replica to film the scene, in which Stark is executed by the sadistic King Joffrey in front of his two daughters.

“It was just really weird, because everywhere you’d go, his body would be left somewhere, or his head would be left somewhere (on set),” Maisie Williams, who plays the youngest Stark daughter Arya. “It was a really weird (week), because it took ages to film that scene.”

The moment also put the rest of the ensemble cast on notice —_at least, those unfamiliar with the literary series, A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin. When the series returns on HBO in April of 2012, we now know that any character is fair game for a sudden end.

“As an actor, it keeps you on your toes — really genuinely not knowing where it’s going to go next,” Emilia Clarke, who plays exiled rival for the throne, Daenerys Targaryen, says in an on-set interview. “With Ned . . . it is definitely a shock.”

Fresh from shooting a promo for Season 2, Clarke is in full Daenerys mode. Her silver-blond wig is embroidered into a ponytail, and her slender, petite frame is decked out in a royal-looking blue-patterned dress, embroidered with gold patterns.

She looks fit to be a hard-edged queen. But her warm smile, easy laugh and emotive dark eyes cultivate an aura of sincerity. She looks happy to be where she is — if not a little bit surprised at all the attention created by her breakout role.

The series, centred on an epic struggle for power in an ancient land called Westeros (or the Seven Kingdoms), was a ratings hit for HBO and garnered widespread critical praise. Actor Peter Dinklage won an Emmy this fall for his supporting role as the dwarf, Tyrion Lannister. Dinklage was nominated for a Golden Globe this month, and the series also landed a nod for best drama.

Beyond deft writing and head-turning — not to mention head-losing — plot twists, the show has also gained notoriety for unabashed scenes of violence and sex.

Charles Dance, who plays Lord Tywin Lannister, was not in early Season 1 episodes, and recalls his first impressions from a London screening. “You saw all this violence and all this rumpy pumpy — and it’s all doggie fashion,” the venerable British actor says with an incredulous laugh, in between takes on set, while decked in silks and armour. “And I said to (the executive producers) . . . ’Obviously, the missionary position didn’t come into vogue for a few years yet in the Seven Kingdoms. They said, ‘We wanted it to be kind of animalistic, Charles,’ and I said, ’Well, it’s certainly that.’”

Clarke, who found herself at the heart of many of those racy scenes, admits she did a double take when reading some scripts. But she makes no apologies.

“We’ve been able to take it to a very real level. It was never intended to be a show for kids,” she says. “It’s gritty in a realistic way.”

Clarke says the strong, ambitious female characters — including Dany — are “more interesting” than the men, because it takes such “guts” and “strength” for them to thrive in the series’ archaic, male-oriented world.

Daenerys’s story centres on her quest to return home from overseas to re-take her murdered father’s stolen throne. But that also means she never gets to film with the rest of the cast.

“Sometimes (I) feel like the kid left out — the weirdo with the silver hair that no one likes to talk to,” she says. “There is definitely an element of that. But then, at the same time, that fuels the character, because she is so desperate to get home to where everyone else is.”

The new season will feature more of Daenerys’s newly hatched dragons, first glimpsed in the season-finale cliffhanger. “They’re growing bit by bit. . . . (We’re) feeding them well,” she jokes of her computer-generated pets.

“You feel the weight (of responsibility) on her shoulders a lot more in this season,” Clarke added, noting her character’s grand arc in the first season, from helpless girl to burgeoning warrior queen. Will Daenerys go even further down a path of darkness?

“She could be leaning that way,” she says with a coy smile.

Beyond more dragons in Season 2, fans will also get to see the other side of the series’ giant, famous wall for the first time —_a wild, cold land beyond the borders of civilization. Kit Harington, who plays Ned’s bastard son Jon Snow, ventures into that realm —_one littered with perils such as savage Wildlings and the mythical White Walkers, a supernatural race of creatures only glimpsed once in Season 1.

“The threat of them is there,” Harington, every bit the handsome, grizzled fighter in his black leathers and a long, fur cloak, says of the mysterious foes. “And I think that’s (one) of the exciting thing(s) about the part of the story I’m involved in . . . that there is this kind of threat from these things that is much darker and worse than any war or anything else in the story. These things are really quite horrific.”

Writer and executive-producer David Benioff says Game of Thrones and HBO were a perfect marriage.

“Aside from the magic, aside from the dragons,” complex, intriguing characters have been the key to the series’ success, he says.

Season 2 will introduce many new characters — including a fierce Wildling girl (played by Rose Leslie) and Stannis Baratheon (played by Stephen Dillane), one of multiple contenders for the Iron Throne.

The beyond-the-wall segments were shot in Iceland and promise to be “visually extraordinary,” Benioff said, adding, “Jon’s pretty much out on his own, and coming face to face with real unknowns and a bit of romance.”

Clarke admits there’s a danger for the cast in reading too far ahead, noting she only read the first book while filming Season 1.

“I very much wanted to be growing with her,” she said of her character. “George R.R. Martin’s imagination is epic and the books are getting vast . . . so (we’re) just trying to keep up.”

While Ned Stark will be missed, multiple contenders will vie for power in Season 2 — each claiming the right to rule. Clarke can’t be faulted for her own self-interest in whom she hopes will eventually triumph in this game of thrones. But she makes a good case for Daenerys, even though it comes on the end of a short burst of laughter: “Dragons . . . I mean, how is anyone going to come up against that?”

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